Electric vehicles are establishing a foothold in institutional and commercial facilities. From fleet vehicles for transportation to landscape and grounds care vehicles used to move workers and materials around campuses, EVs have given maintenance and landscape managers viable — and more sustainable — alternatives to gasoline-powered equipment. Now, the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) and the U.S. Access Board are taking steps to ensure EV charging stations and chargers are accessible to all users.
The DOT’s Federal Highway Administration recently announced a notice of proposed rulemaking to establish minimum standards and requirements for projects funded under the National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure Formula Program. These standards and requirements will help ensure a national EV charging network that is user-friendly, reliable and accessible to all people and interoperable between different charging companies with similar payment systems, pricing information, charging speeds, and more.
No national standards exist for the installation, operation or maintenance of EV charging stations, and wide disparities exist among EV charging stations in key components, such as operational practices, payment methods, site organization, speed and power of chargers, and other essential information. Under the DOT’s proposed rule, the standards would specify requirements for a minimum number and type of chargers, the interoperability of EV charging infrastructure, traffic control devices and on-premise signs, data submittal, network connectivity of EV charging infrastructure, and information on publicly available EV charging locations, pricing, real-time availability, and accessibility through mapping applications.
The U.S. Access Board is developing a technical assistance document on design recommendations for accessible EV charging stations and chargers. The document will provide information on when and how the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and Architectural Barriers Act (ABA) Accessibility Standards apply to EV charging stations and chargers and recommendations that will help make EV charging stations and chargers accessible to everyone, including people with disabilities.
Dan Hounsell is senior editor for the facilities market. He has more than 25 years of experience covering engineering, maintenance, and grounds management issues in institutional and commercial facilities.
